Travelling with Terry

One day I will find myself in India,breathing in the fresh air on the unfamiliar streets. Perhaps also in Mainland China,with my heavy backpack in the places where I have never been.

While everyone is wholeheartedly wishing that they can embrace diversity,they are disappointed to discover that they have fallen in love with security.I need an injection to boost my immunity against the force of routine,because there are so many things that I have not yet seen.

If Terry needs an injection, how much more the rest of us?

Freedom and Permission

"Americans are still permitted to do a great many things, though not as many things as their ancestors could take for granted. Fine. But permission isn’t freedom. The privilege of a subject isn’t the right of a free man." - Joseph Sobran.

Foreign Policy

"Your authors have no position on foreign policy. We only notice that the people who do have them are idiots." -Bill Bonner.


(I used to not like Mr. Bonner's writing. But he's growing on me.)

Morbid Thought

Bill Bonner found this in the Daily Mail. (I couldn't find it online at their website.)

Generally...it appears to take around 30 seconds to lose consciousness after decapitation. We know this from the French Revolution and the liberal use
of the guillotine. The condemned were asked to blink if they were still alert after their heads have been removed from their body. Records show that it took between 20 and 30 seconds for the heads to stop blinking.

Yikes.

Missing Music

There are many gaping holes in my education. Though a Catholic with a degree in philosophy, I'm almost completely ignorant of theology. My grasp of history is clearly inadequate. Yet, I've always felt that I have a solid foundation. If you allow physics to substitute for astronomy, I guess I'd beat the average on six of the seven traditional liberal arts. That seventh one is music; and I'm almost embarrassed by how little I know.

Since E. joined the school band, I've wondered whether now might be the time to address my own deficiency. An unexpected invitation to join the church choir prompted the same idle thoughts. Not to mention being mistaken for the organist/choir director on multiple occasions--most recently by several long-time choir members! ("You mean, you're not D___?" one of them asked me after I introduced myself at a party.)

I think I won't pursue it too far right now. I'm already immersed in history with E. and M., and have begun a long overdue study of scripture. And I need to keep up my professional knowledge as well. And I'm determined to learn another language well enough to say that I "speak it", without any significant disclaimers.

Still, we could all do with a little more music in our lives. It won't hurt to dabble on occasion. This blog posting has persuaded me to make a little time for music study between everything else: A (little) Light from the East: On Reading Music.

Fasting at Vassar

According to the local paper, some students at Vassar College will be fasting today, in order to experience hunger and better empathize with the poor. Their ordeal will last from 10:00am until 5:00pm.

In other words, they are skipping lunch.

One senior at the school hopes that, by taking such extreme measures, they will draw attention to the plight of the less fortunate. "We hope it will spark political action," she says.

One can always hope.

Starting over.

Wow. A month since my last post! Amazing how a flood, a broken computer, and an unexpectedly complicated home remodelling project can pass the time.

Bill Bonner on Tom Friedman on suicide bombers

Bill Bonner at LRC thanks Tom Friedman for enlightening us on the practical implications of suicide bombing:

And now for Friedman's pièce de résistance: "You cannot build a healthy state from suicide bombers."

We've always wondered about that, haven't you dear reader? We mean, how you build a healthy state and all. Many times it has come up in dinner conversations, some people arguing that blowing yourself up really can help strengthen the foundations of a healthy, modern republic. Didn't the whole universe get started with a big bang, they point out? Others take the contrary view, of course. They argue that self-detonation has a tendency to disaggregate the body politic; things tend to come apart rather than together, they say.

We could have gone either way. So, we're glad Friedman has finally delivered a verdict on this vital issue. Someone should tell the suicide bombers; they have a right to know.

There are no uneducated men

G.K. Chesterton, in an essay called "What is Right with the World?":

And so, sincerely speaking, there are no uneducated men. They may escape the trivial examinations, but not the tremendous examinations of existence. The dependence of infancy, the enjoyment of animals, the love of woman and the fear of death -- these are more frightful and more fixed than all conceivable forms of the cultivation of the mind. It is idle to complain of schools and colleges being trivial. In no case will a college ever teach the important things. He has learnt them right or wrong, and he has learnt them all alone.

What does 2000 Look Like?

Without being graphic, this helps put into perspective the nearly 2000 U.S. deaths in Iraq since the beginning of the war. And don't forget that this is just a fraction of the number of dead Iraqi civilians, who had no more to do with terrorism than you or I. Those who argue that the war is justified on the grounds that it will save more lives than it cost should pay special attention. They are comparing real deaths to theoretical ones; so they had better be sure of their theory.